31.1.03

Bishops seek saint for Internet: Fed up with hackers, a flood of spam and lousy connections, Italian Roman Catholics have launched a search for a patron saint of the Internet. And they hope their online poll will yield a holy Web protector by Easter.

Coding from Scratch: A Conversation with Virtual Reality Pioneer Jaron Lanier
Currently, he is working on something he calls phenotropic computing, in which the current model of software as "protocol adherence" is replaced by "pattern recognition" as a way of connecting components of software systems.

Sneaky Toolbar Hijacks Browsers: It's the most evil thing on the Internet, according to some of its victims. But it's not a virus, a scam or a raunchy porn site.
It's a browser toolbar that some swear is doing "drive-by downloads" -- installing itself without users' permission -- then taking over their systems and making it impossible to uninstall.
"When I find the bastards who programmed this thing I'd be happy to castrate them with a pair of dull pinking shears," fumed one of Xupiter's many unhappy victims in a newsgroup posting.
Xupiter is an Internet Explorer toolbar program. Once active in a system, it periodically changes users' designated homepages to xupiter.com, redirects all searches to Xupiter's site, and blocks any attempts to restore the original browser settings.

The Lord Of the Webs: Tim Berners-Lee could well be the J.R.R. Tolkien of the computer world.
Tolkien, a philologist and author of "The Lord of the Rings," created a fantasy world in which characters used languages he invented. Berners-Lee is the inventor who gave us the World Wide Web, a system built on "languages" largely created by Berners-Lee. He's now working on a sequel, called the Semantic Web.
"It is a paradigm shift, like the original World Wide Web," Berners-Lee told scientists gathered at the National Science Foundation to hear his progress report Monday.

In Net Attacks, Defining the Right to Know: Among the new voices in the debate are two researchers at Harvard who argue that it is in the victim's interest to make its vulnerabilities public. The disclosure itself acts as a fortification of sorts, they suggest.
In a paper presented at a cryptography conference this week, Michael Smith, a computer science professor, and Stuart Schechter, a doctoral candidate in computer science, argued that organizations or individuals that share information about computer break-ins are less attractive targets for malicious hackers.
If an organization tells others about its security holes and the fixes it has made to them, the two researchers say, then others have the opportunity to make the same changes and spread the word. Ultimately, a company that clearly reports the details of a break-in and whether the perpetrator was caught reduces the chances that someone else will attempt to use the same path into a secured system. Hackers would prefer a company that has not reported news of a break-in to one that has.

Out of this world: NASA tests mobile IP in space: With the Jan. 16 launch of the space shuttle Columbia, NASA has been able to test for the first time how well the mobile Internet protocol works in space, according to Jim Rash, who leads NASA's Operating Missions as a Node on the Internet, or OMNI, program.
Although other NASA missions have tested standard Internet protocol, this mission is the first in which the emerging mobile standard is being used. Testing is being done at NASA's Goddard facility in Greenbelt, Md. The shuttle flight will last through Feb. 1.

Microsoft tablets start strong in Europe: Sales of portables running Microsoft's Tablet PC software started strong out of the gate in Europe, according to market researcher Context.
Despite only a partial quarter of sales, Microsoft tablet PCs accounted for 1 percent of European portable sales during the fourth quarter. Microsoft launched its Windows XP Tablet PC Edition on Nov. 7, with Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu-Siemens, Toshiba among the manufacturers selling portables using the software.

MS losing developers to Linux: Linux's popularity with programmers has already managed to make a huge dent on the market share of rival software Unix and now it's gradually threatening to do the same with Microsoft's dominance of the business software market. And giants such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell Computer are lending a helping hand.

How the net leaves itself open to attack: The net is making itself unnecessarily vulnerable to crippling attacks, warn experts.
Analysis of the queries sent to one of the net's core address books show that 98% of them could have been handled by other parts of the network.
Dealing with these queries on the outer reaches of the net rather than at its core could help limit the damage of concerted attacks on key servers say experts.
The report and advice comes as the net recovers from the damage wrought by the Slammer worm that exploited holes in Microsoft software.

MPs urge changes to net snooping laws: The controversial plans to force internet service providers to keep records of a customer's e-mail and web browsing has enraged the industry and much of the legislation has yet to be implemented.
It could be time to stand back and rethink the plans, said Liberal Democrat MP Richard Allan, a member of the [All Party Internet Group].

28.1.03

Cell Phones 'Blind' Drivers, Study Shows: Drivers who use a cellular telephone, even with a "hands-free" device, suffer from a kind of tunnel vision that endangers themselves and others, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Legislation that seeks to make mobile telephone use by drivers safer by mandating the use of a hands-free device may be providing a false sense of security, they warned.

Hacker Insurance Market Boosted by Cyberattacks: Hacker insurance, also known as "network risk insurance," has been on the market for about three years, but is expected to explode from a $100 million sideshow into a $2.5 billion behemoth by 2005, according to insurance industry projections.

Microsoft Was Vulnerable to Worm Virus: Microsoft Corp. itself was exposed to the virus-like attack that crippled global Internet activity last weekend because it failed to install crucial fixes to its own software on many Microsoft computer servers, according to internal e-mails obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

Worm exposes flaws and apathy: In the largest such incident since Code Red or Nimda, the Slammer worm - also known as Sapphire - causes chaos within many corporate networks. The malicious program, exploiting an old flaw in Microsoft SQL Server, underscores a dirty little secret in the IT industry: Administrators are slow to fix even widely publicized problems.

The Magic Continues: It makes sense that Bill Gates would be tech's biggest optimist. For one, it's hard to be down when you're holding $33 billion of Microsoft stock. Then there's the fact that even in 2002's IT slump his company prospered, growing 20%-plus each quarter and posting a phenomenal 35% after-tax profit margin. Yet he has reason to worry: Last fall Microsoft revealed that outside of operating systems and Office, it can't seem to make money. Xbox, MSN, and the company's software for small businesses, set-top boxes, handheld devices, and cellphones together produce well over $1 billion in operating losses a year and generate a scant 15% of Microsoft's $28 billion in revenues.

Network Solutions Spills E-Mail Addresses: Herndon-based Internet domain registrar Network Solutions Inc. said it will apologize to tens of thousands of customers whose e-mail addresses the company inadvertently released yesterday.
"A few thousand" Network Solutions customers received e-mail messages that contained more than 85,000 e-mail addresses of other Network Solutions customers, said spokesman Patrick Burns of VeriSign Inc., the parent company of Network Solutions.
"We made a mistake, and we'll apologize to our customers," Burns said.

A hard nut to crack: Next month BT launches a new ad campaign for its broadband service. Dominic Timms meets the woman with the mammoth task of achieving 5 million subscribers by 2006
She admits that there are unresolved issues with broadband-specific content and that concerns over piracy remain. "Content owners across a range of music, games and video have not been aggressive in moving to an online distribution world. I think that has just got to change, it is inevitable. One of the issues for me about piracy is the lack of legitimate channels. Having legitimate channels does have a direct impact on piracy providing it's an attractive and compelling product."

The new jailbird jingle: If you've ever used a peer-to-peer network and swapped copyrighted files, chances are pretty good you're guilty of a federal felony.
I'm not joking. A obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act that former U.S. President Bill Clinton signed in 1997 makes peer-to-peer pirates liable for $250,000 in fines and subject to prison terms of up to three years.

Digital dilemmas: Despite the dotcom boom and bust, the computer and telecommunications revolution has barely begun. Over the next few decades, the internet and related technologies really will profoundly transform society

23.1.03

A New Wireless Web Link: Phone Firms Testing High-Speed Technology Called EvDO
The technology, known as EvDO (Evolution Data Only), provides wireless data connections that are 10 times as fast as a regular modem. Proponents say EvDO offers huge advantages over WiFi, another wireless data technology that is popping up around the country in hotel lobbies and coffee shops, and that it may even be the long sought path around local telephone and cable companies' lock on the high-speed Internet market in most residential areas.
But after learning some hard lessons in the last few years, the U.S. wireless industry is skittish about investing heavily in anything that does not have immediate promise of improving its bottom line.
EvDO would require wireless companies to spend billions of dollars to buy additional spectrum and update every cell tower in their networks with new software. But the industry is still smarting from the failure of other once promising wireless technologies: In Europe, "3G" (third generation) technologies were supposed to transform the economy, turning cell phones into mini-entertainment centers, but reality failed to live up to the hype.
Wi-Fi: Here Come the Big Guns
Analysts figure that only about 16,000 Europeans now pay to use Wi-Fi. And of those, only 4,000 are regular subscribers to services that charge up to $150 a month for unlimited downloads. By comparison, the U.S. has about 65,000 paying users and Asia 20,000. But 2003 is being billed as a year of gonzo growth--a rare bright spot in the otherwise gloomy tech landscape. European sales of Wi-Fi interface cards for PCs are expected to soar 66%, to 4.6 million units, says technology market researcher In-Stat/MDR in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the number of hot spots should quadruple (chart). At that rate, Europe could have a half-million Wi-Fi users by 2004, according to telecom consultant Yankee Group.

Could Linux dethrone the software king? [T]he fight is beginning to heat up. A head-on clash between rival visions of the software industry, with Microsoft pitched against big rivals, may not be far off.

Internet content in peril in non-competitive world: As competition bogs down for high-speed Internet access in the United States, prices are rising. This helps explain why it costs much more for people here to subscribe to cable-modem or digital subscriber line services than it does, for example, next door in Canada.
Stunted competition also may be a harbinger of something even more pernicious, says Yale Braunstein, a professor in the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California-Berkeley. The same companies that are gaining oligopoly power over the transport of data have every incentive to influence the content, too.

Feds Seek Public Input on Hacker Sentencing: Should computer intruders and virus writers spend more time in prison, or less? Should a hacker's motives be considered? The U.S. commission that decides federal sentences wants your opinion

Instead of a D.J., a Web Server Names That Tune: A song and its name are easily parted, as anyone knows who has listened to a tune on the radio and then waited in vain for the announcer to identify it.
Now some companies are using a technology that can name that tune as it plays, promptly displaying words like "Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet" in text on an Internet radio or cellphone.

The Progress of Computing: The present study analyzes computer performance over the last century and a half. Three results stand out. First, there has been a phenomenal increase in computer power over the twentieth century. Performance in constant dollars or in terms of labor units has improved since 1900 by a factor in the order of 1 trillion to 5 trillion, which represent compound growth rates of over 30 percent per year for a century. Second, there were relatively small improvements in efficiency (perhaps a factor of ten) in the century before World War II. Around World War II, however, there was a substantial acceleration in productivity, and the growth in computer power from 1940 to 2001 has averaged 55 percent per year. Third, this study develops estimates of the growth in computer power relying on performance rather than on input-based measures typically used by official statistical agencies. The price declines using performance-based measures are markedly higher than those reported in the official statistics.

Unpacking “Privacy” for a Networked World: Although privacy is broadly recognized as a dominant concern for the development of novel interactive technologies, our ability to reason analytically about privacy in real settings is limited. A lack of conceptual interpretive frameworks makes it difficult to unpack interrelated privacy issues in settings where information technology is also present. Building on theory developed by social psychologist Irwin Altman, we outline a model of privacy as a dynamic, dialectic process. We discuss three tensions that govern interpersonal privacy management in everyday life, and use these to explore select technology case studies drawn from the research literature. These suggest new ways for thinking about privacy in sociotechnical environments as a practical matter.

Personal Data Is Pirated From Russian Phone Files: It is a prime nightmare of the digital age: all of your personal information — credit card numbers, home address, Social Security number — stolen and passed around, or perhaps even posted on the Internet for anyone to see.
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of customers of Mobile Telesystems, a Russian mobile phone company, have been discovering firsthand how that feels. The company acknowledged on Tuesday that it had suffered a huge security breach that led to pirated CD's, purportedly containing its entire database of five million customers, appearing on the streets of Moscow.

Mobiles get a sense of touch: Within a year you could be able to "touch" someone over your mobile phone.
A US company called Immersion has adapted the sensory technology used in gamepads and joysticks to send physical sensations via a mobile.

Will new filters save us from spam? THE roughly 500 programmers, researchers, hackers and IT administrators gathered in a chilly classroom on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Friday aren't just looking to slow the relentless onslaught of spam - they want to completely destroy its business model.

How to Foil Data Thieves, Hackers: [R]esearchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo are developing software that can generate highly personalized profiles of network users by analyzing the sequences of commands entered at each computer terminal.
The system - a prototype is likely to be ready for intensive testing this summer - could provide a high-grade layer of protection for military installations and government agencies as well as banking or other commercial networks that require especially tight monitoring.

20.1.03

Michelin to Embed Electronic ID Tags in Tires: Tire maker Michelin MICP.PA said on Tuesday it planned to embed technology in its tires that would allow them to be wirelessly linked to the car they are mounted on and transmit details like inflation pressure to a dashboard computer.
Michelin North America, a unit of the French maker of tires and travel guides, said the system consists of an antenna and an integrated circuit the size of a match head.

17.1.03

Saturday Marks 100 Years of Wireless: On Jan. 18, 1903, Guglielmo Marconi sent the world's first wireless two-way message across the Atlantic. This historic exchange between a president and a king (America's Theodore Roosevelt and Britain's Edward VII) instantly bridged the 3,000 miles from Cape Cod, Mass., to Poldu Station in Cornwall, England.

Pedal-powered e-mail in the jungle: 2 Bay Area visionaries head to Laos with a tough little PC for villagers
Early next month, a villager in the mountainous jungles of northern Laos will climb onto a stationary bicycle hooked to a handmade, wireless computer and pedal his people into the digital age.
It will be the first time a human-powered computer has ever linked a Third World village to the Internet by wireless remote. And the two Americans who will make this possible -- one a Navy veteran who became a leader in the Vietnam anti-war movement two generations ago, the other a founding pioneer of Silicon Valley -- plan to be at his side as he pedals.

The 12th Annual International EFF Pioneer Awards: The Electronic Frontier Foundation established the Pioneer Awards to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology.
The International Pioneer Awards nominations are open to both individuals and organizations from any country.

Hackers Humble Security Experts: A wisecracking group of hackers confirmed its claim this week that it spread an antipiracy virus was nothing but a hoax aimed at garnering fame.
But members of the group, known as Gobbles Security, conceded that a program it released to demonstrate the problem was a Trojan horse capable of destroying files on the computers of unwary Unix users.
Experts said the bizarre incident, which caused a brief frenzy among some security firms and fans of music file sharing, follows a grand tradition of pranks by the playful hacking group.

14.1.03

Internet browser that quadruples surf speed wins Irish science prize: Known as "XWEBS", the system works with an ordinary Internet connection using a 56K modem on a normal telephone line.
The software was tested by scientists at University College, Dublin last week and they found it boosted surfing speeds by between 100 and 500 percent depending on the basic dial-up connection rate.

Net music copyright deal reached: The leading trade associations for the music and technology industries, which have been at loggerheads over consumers downloading songs on the Internet, have negotiated a compromise they contend will protect copyrights on movies and music without new government involvement.

Google's Gaggle of Problems: By some estimates, Google serves 75% of all Web search queries, and it has become one of the most powerful Web companies in the world. Now, it may be facing one of the oldest maxims in business: Once you make it to the top, it can be mighty hard to stay there.

13.1.03

Fight with computer brings SWAT team: A 32-year-old Boulder man who had opened his apartment's patio door to enjoy Wednesday's unusually warm weather was later overheard screaming threats and seen waving what appeared to be a handgun, prompting a maintenance worker to call police.
Officers, as a precaution, evacuated the man's apartment building and called SWAT officers to assist in defusing the situation.
It turned out that the man was simply upset at his computer - which he had called a "bitch" he "wanted to kill," police said - and the gun was a plastic pellet gun, not the .45-caliber automatic handgun it was made to resemble.

Redefining the PC: Imagine if your computer screen curved around your head, immersing you in information, images and sounds.
Taking a cue from the film industry, Gary Starkweather had a hunch that enlarging and bending the screen would make computers much more natural to use.
luxurious line of well-designed PC peripherals constructed from the finest American hardwoods

Feds enlist hacker to foil piracy rings: Federal prosecutors will tell a U.S. District Court in Tampa today of a plea deal with a man they call one of the most skillful pirates of DirecTV and EchoStar signals. The deal includes his agreement to help them crack several international computer-chip-hacking groups.

Review of Bits, 2002/2003: The biggest technology story of 2002, in my opinion, was the exponential increase in the number of bits and bitstreams engaged by Net users worldwide. Not just sp-m mail, which got the most attention, but all bitstreams.
In 2003 these bits will continue to increase exponentially, driven by the good experience - that is, the ease-of-use - of their publishing tools.

Connected Again: Questions for Kevin Mitnick
- When you were in jail, how did your fellow prisoners treat you?
- They respected me for my skills and my intelligence. But at the same time they disrespected me because I didn't do it for money. All these guys in there said that if they had my skills, their wallets would have been fat, they would have had ''big bank.''
- Did anyone ask you to hack for them?
- I had one Colombian drug dealer offer me $5 million cash if, after I got out, I could somehow rig the computer system so he'd be released early.

A help line for European telecoms: Europe's incumbent telecom operators are heavily in debt after their ambitious expansion efforts in the 1990s and an enormous bill for third-generation licenses. So far, the response has been to slash spending. In 2001, these companies trimmed their operating costs by up to 6 percent, reduced the staffs of their core fixed-line divisions by as much as 12 percent--more cuts are to come--and pared their capital spending to the bone.
But cost cutting alone won't revive their fortunes: In addition, they must do something about falling revenues, for at some of the incumbents' revenues from the fixed-line voice business, which still accounts for 70 percent to 90 percent of the wireline total, have been shrinking by up to 12 percent a year. So far, revenues from data have also been lower than expected, because an oversupply of data networks has forced down the price of such services--a particular blow to incumbents, since a good deal of their recent capital spending was devoted to building these networks. It therefore isn't surprising that the market valuations of the telecoms' fixed-line businesses fell by 25 percent, on average, from 2000 to 2001.Clearly, revenues are only one factor behind this decline, but if they don't improve, cash flows will worsen, and valuations will fall even further.
Problem child: The Baby Bells cry foul as the competition intensifies.

$10 million in PC chips stolen: British police on Sunday investigated the theft of computer chips worth an estimated $10 million from a van near London's Heathrow airport.
The thieves struck Sunday morning when the van was left briefly unattended in a commercial area close to the airport, police said.

10.1.03

Tablet Test-Drive: We turn to our lab and to real-world users for the verdict on Microsoft's ambitious effort to popularize pen-based computing.
For now, few PC buyers may be able to justify the expense of a tablet. But as features are refined, new tablet-optimized software appears, and the price premium versus conventional portables declines (as Gartner believes may happen in two to three years), tablets could make sense for many contemplating a notebook purchase.

Building Virtual Reality: Imagine a world where you could float to distant lands, find friends with the click of a button and build complex objects like houses instantaneously.
Better yet, in this world no one ever starves, ages, gets hurt or dies.
Sounds like something out of Star Trek or countless other works of science-fiction, right?
But several companies are building such worlds - where else? - in cyberspace.

9.1.03

Phone fund for schools, libraries riddled with fraud: A $2.25 billion federal program that helps schools and libraries connect to the Internet is honeycombed with fraud and financial shenanigans, but the government officials in charge say they don’t have the resources to fix it.

Game Over? Not Yet: Sony Vs. Microsoft
Sony insiders say the company is concerned about the Microsoft threat, but to the outside world, the company is showing its poker face. "They don't enter into our strategic thinking," says Sony's Tretton. "They're not going in the right direction."
Sony might want to be a little less blasé about its attitude toward Microsoft. "Put it this way," says Lin of Jeffries & Co. "Microsoft is never the underdog."

Start-up creating a virtual social world: The There software, which is expected to be released commercially by mid-year, allows users to create a lifelike avatar, or online character, that acts out typed commands; type a smiley face, for instance, and the avatar smiles.
``Online chatting hasn't fundamentally changed since the 1980s,'' Melcher said. ``We want to create a place where consumers can hang out online and talk with friends.''
The 82-person company has been secretly creating its immersive 3-D experience for four years and has raised $33 million from investors including CNet CEO Halsey Minor and Sutter Hill Ventures. Sponsors include Nike, Levi Strauss, Hewlett-Packard and graphics-chip maker ATI Technologies.
Startup Begat Virtual Universe: The company, in secret development for four years, faces competition meanwhile from online games. On the surface at least, a newly launched Internet version of the popular Sims franchise resembles There.
"The difference is Sims online is essentially a game. There is not," said Tom Melcher, There's chief executive. "There is a place. In Sims, you're driven by game motives. You have hunger, comfort, a bladder and energy. In There, you're driven by relationships."
Multiplayer - the Only Mobile Game: Single-player games are a waste of devices built for human communication.
Sensitive robots taught to gauge human emotion: Robotics designers are working with psychologists here at Vanderbilt University to improve human-machine interfaces by teaching robots to sense human emotions. Such "sensitive" robots would change the way they interact with humans based on an evaluation of a person's mood.

Macworld, Woz, Dyson & the Mac Crusader: Macworld is one of the most intensely covered technology shows on the conference calendar. According to the show's organizer, IDG World Expo, 1,400 members of the media from all over the world pre-registered for press passes. By comparison, Comdex, which is a much bigger show, attracts about 2,000 reporters.

FTSE 100 websites are 'mediocre': Some of the UK's biggest companies are struggling to get to grips with basic web design concepts and should scrap their sites and start again, according to web usability experts.
Porter Research's second annual analysis of FTSE 100 companies' websites said that overall design, speed of loading and cross-browser compatibility were weak, and that many lack 'must have' content elements.

Defending the DNS: The domain name system - the global directory that maps names to Internet Protocol addresses - was designed to distribute authority, making organizations literally "masters of their own domain." But with this mastery comes the responsibility of contributing to the defense of the DNS.

7.1.03

La Iglesia no perdona por e-mail: La Santa Sede ha prohibido el uso de nuevas tecnologías como el correo electrónico o el fax para comunicar asuntos del Sacramento de la Penitencia, en los que se trata el secreto de conciencia, tutelado por el sigilo sacramental.
[Act.:] Vatican warning on danger of 'online confession': The Vatican has warned Catholic bishops and priests not to use the internet to hear “online confessions” in case they are read by “ill-intentioned people such as hackers” for purposes such as blackmail.
[Act.:] In Italy, an SMS a Day Can Keep the Devil Away: Italy's largest mobile phone operator, TIM, has begun a service to offer clients SMS messages with "the prayer of the day," "saint of the day" or "gospel of the day."
The four beeps that signal an incoming inspiration are the latest opportunity given to Italian Catholics to help them on the technological stairway to Heaven.
[Act.:] Pensamentos do Papa Disponíveis no Telemóvel: O pensamento do dia do Papa João Paulo II será difundido, a partir de hoje, através de mensagens SMS que podem ser consultadas nos telemóveis pelo preço de 15 cêntimos

Why Kevin Mitnick Worries Me: The solution to the ever-growing army of intruders is to beef up our cybercrime-fighting forces - exponentially. The FBI created a new cybercrime unit in late 2001, but it doesn't appear to be enough.

5.1.03

Violent videos: Clearly a lot more research is needed to alleviate the fears of parents about what their offspring are getting up to in the back room. Children have always been subjected to a fair degree of violence in their entertainment (Punch and Judy and Mickey Mouse are not exactly paradigms of peaceful behaviour). On the face of it, escapist video games are less worrying than the bloodstained realism of so many gangster films, but that is not saying much. Until we have more evidence of the effects on gamers, maybe we should be guided by the New York policeman who observed that he would far rather see kids shooting cops on their screens than out on the streets.

Hacking Away, Long Before There Were Hackers The curious thing about the new film "Catch Me if You Can" is how contemporary it seems. Curious because this tale of Frank W. Abagnale Jr. - in real life a teenage con artist who cashed millions in fake checks while impersonating an airline pilot, a doctor and a prosecutor - is set in the swinging 60's.
In those days few mortals had used a computer, and Internet wasn't even a word. But the young Frank Abagnale seems an eery prefiguration of a very modern character: the hacker.

Parents of slain woman want to stop Internet brokers from selling personal information: Depending on the state Supreme Court's answers, the federal judge could dismiss the lawsuit. Even if that happens, Helen Remsburg said she is thankful that the danger is at least being discussed.
Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington said the outcome of the case could have national implications.
''One of the important aspects of this case is that the private investigators were licensed in Florida but they were providing services to people across the country,'' he said.

Microsoft counts on antipiracy technique: Microsoft is set to release its first mainstream consumer software application protected by product activation, in what could be a first step toward expanding use of the antipiracy technology.

Quantum computing: Building a practical quantum computer will be hard. But another step towards one has just been announced in Nature. Stephan Gulde, of the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, and his colleagues have built a prototype machine whose chief working part is a single atom of calcium, and they have run a program on it.

Lindows CEO funds Xbox hacking contest: Michael Robertson, CEO of software company Lindows, has revealed himself as the formerly anonymous donor of $200,000 in prize money in a contest to translate the Linux operating system to Microsoft's Xbox video game console.

Happy Birthday, Dear Internet: From its early days as a pet project in the Department of Defense to its infamous time nestled under Al Gore's wing, the history of the Internet is littered with dozens of so-called birthdays. [...]
Wednesday is one of those days.
Some historians claim the Internet was born in 1961, when Dr. Leonard Kleinrock first published a paper on packet-switching technology at MIT.

Professors Vie With Web for Class's Attention: Universities are rushing toward a wireless future, installing networks that let students and the faculty surf the Internet from laptop computers in the classroom, in the library or by those ponds that always seem to show up on the cover of the campus brochure.
But professors say the technology poses a growing challenge for them: retaining their students' attention.

There's No Place Like Home - Why American teens don't want the new cell phones: The primacy of home Internet access in the United States has led to the sub-par debut of Short Messaging Service on these shores. This year, 1.5 billion SMS notes will zing through American air—which sounds impressive until you hear that Europe averages 30 billion messages a month. The killjoy is the popularity of PC-based alternatives such as AOL Instant Messaging. If you're an American teen who already logs onto your PC for 90 minutes a day, how much more IM-ing can you stand?

Report: Online spending busts records: Buoyed by a rising population of online shoppers and more liberal spending by online shopping veterans, e-commerce in the United States in 2002 blew away old spending records with a nearly 40 percent leap over 2001, according to preliminary results from one research firm.
Not counting auctions, online consumer sales leaped to about $74 billion in 2002, according to ComScore Networks.

Windows Name Is Challenged: Lindows.com is defending a broad principle, its lawyer says. "No company, no matter how powerful, no matter how much money it has spent, should be able to gain a commercial monopoly on words in the English language," said the lawyer, Daniel Harris, a partner at Clifford Chance.